Risen (25 page)

But today was not that day. There
was no beautiful, sunny moment with Sylvie’s blade to his neck, no
deep stirring in his soul.

The children ran for only a short
distance more before it became fast evident that with Sylvie at his
side Risen would never outrun the men. He knew he might escape if
he were alone—it couldn’t be too much farther to the castle if he
ran on without her—but leaving her behind was simply not an
acceptable option. He’d saved her at the farm, and he could not
grapple with the idea that it might be reasonable to abandon her,
run to get his father, and then chase back after her. To him, this
was not even a remotely passable idea.

He was determined that he would
stand by her and die with her if that was the intent of those
chasing them. Because…he loved her.

“Risen, stop,” Sylvie was
breathless.

“Do you need me to slow
down?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Stop
taking care of me. Run ahead.”

“No,” he said flatly.

“Risen—”

“No!” he maintained and continued
to drag her along.

Sylvie thought otherwise. “Risen,
leave me. Why do you insist? You’re being unreasonable. You’re so
much faster, you could go on without me.” She stopped, dragging him
to a halt with her. “Quit being so stubborn! This is wrong. You
must leave, now. I can delay them for you, and you can get
away.”

“I’m not leaving you!” He shook his
head defiantly.

“Please listen to what you are
saying,” she choked, breathless from the exertion. “This is not
only about us. You are the heir to this dynasty. You cannot be
taken. You mustn’t be taken. For the good of our people, you must
survive. Risen, this is not game.”

He stared dumbly at her, could not
believe what she was saying. It was fairly obvious that her stamina
was fading. Sylvie had experienced, as an infant, the red rash
disease that afflicted some. Her mother had sponged both her and
Tobias with a damp rag when they succumbed to the strange pox.
Tobias had the awful fever for a mere two days and was then up and
about—his normal, active self in no time. Sylvie, however, had
languished with it, bedridden for over a week. The priests had come
and said prayers, and the wise women had burned herbs. Even so, all
had been doubtful the female child would survive. But she had
survived and eventually met the young heir to the Ravan
Dynasty.

Her crooked leg was a product of a
bad lie during her mother’s pregnancy, but her heart was
permanently weakened by the Scarlet Fever. Risen didn’t know any of
this, only that Sylvie struggled to keep up sometimes. There was no
way he could not know how crippled her heart truly was. What he did
know, however, was that she had a greater capacity to love than
most anyone he’d ever known.

She was a frail beauty, like a
fragile, spring blossom in a hail storm. Her spirit, however, was
very strong. Sylvie was also exceedingly clever and calculating.
And courage and compassion—of these she had considerably more than
most.

“We are friends, Risen,” she
pressed him. “But you are important. I am not.” She appeared
unwilling to take another step. “You must go. We will both die if
you don’t, and I will not allow you to sacrifice for
me…ever.”

He was stunned by her words, not
willing to accept the truth of what she was saying. They were
horrible words, cruel because they were true, and so courageous.
But it was simply wrong, and he’d never seen her face so sad. He
wanted to strike something, punish something because of the pain
Sylvie had endured, plunge his knife into the heart of something
evil.

When it appeared as though she would
get nowhere with him, she took his hand in hers. Her words could
not have come easy. “Risen, I know my family is dead. I know mother
and Tobias…” She swallowed, blinked back tears from her lovely,
pale fawn eyes. Her voice was barely a whisper now. “You’ve been so
kind to me, helped spare me. I should have died back there. You are
more dear to me than anyone, but I cannot ask you to die for me. It
would kill me.”

This statement, put into real words,
both mortified and amazed him. Risen thought she looked—standing in
the cold, damp grey of the woods—so out of place, like a precious
treasure God didn’t know was missing.

“I won’t leave you; stop saying
such things. I won’t!” he hissed, genuinely upset with her. He was
anxious, his instincts being that they would eventually be caught
by someone who was of no good whatsoever.

Risen refocused, assessing their
strengths and weaknesses. Sylvie was tired. It seemed she was more
tired lately, but Tobias told him it was because it was lambing
season, and she insisted on sitting up with the
“orphans.”

He thought of the dagger, secured at
his calf and hidden in his boot, and it gave him a small comfort
that at least he had that. It was a fine dagger, and the superb
edge challenged any other in the realm. Thank you, Father, he
thought silently. Nevertheless, the blade gave the boy little
courage today. This was not because he had unreasonable fear in his
heart. It was because something else within his heart—because of
who he had next to him…Sylvie.

* * *

The men were by then within visual
line of sight and advancing on them quickly. There was no doubt the
children were the object of the strange soldiers’ intent. If Risen
might have escaped, left Sylvie behind and, it was too
late.

“Do not tell them who I am,” he
cautioned harshly, “and let me speak for both of us.”

“If they know who you are, they
might effect a ransom,” she whispered.

“No,” he warned. “It’s too risky,
could place my father in a bad position. Don’t tell them, no matter
what.”

This was an exceedingly altruistic
thought for one so young, especially considering the gravity of
their impending situation, but this child was not ordinary. He was
the son of Ravan—offspring of the mercenary Lord—descendant of the
one who was martyred by the priest, D’ata, for which his namesake
remembered. This memory Ravan had made certain his son knew
well.

True, the dynasty thrived when other
townships had suffered, but Ravan told him how quickly this could
all change, how all at once fate could cast one asunder. None knew
it better than he, and he was determined that his past would be a
lesson for his son. This is what he told him.

Consequently, he trained his son
rigorously with the notion of survival always at the forefront. The
payoff was a boy steeled beyond his tender years. He was adequate
at swordplay, above average with the longbow, an extraordinary
equestrian, and wielded his knife with fairly unscrupulous cunning.
And all this by the tender age of twelve.

This was what Ravan had observed,
and yet he pushed the boy, drilled the child continuously on
matters of battle, strategy, timing, espionage, and history. And
even more so on matters of deception, betrayal, and treachery, for
these are the trifecta of ill fate and can close in on a good man
in the beat of a heart. This was what Ravan had taught
him.

These lessons were not easy, and
there was more than the occasional night when the child disappeared
into the dark recesses of the castle to lick the wounds of pride,
cross that his father could be so difficult with him. Life was not
hard, so why did Father have to make it seem so much as though it
was?

During these moments, his mother
would sometimes appear, sit next to her son, and offer conditioning
of another sort, of the kind that removes the mind from the body,
sparing the soul of horrible things.

“Why would I do this?” the boy had
wondered aloud once, “Why must I be able to remove my mind?” He
said it as though it were a trick.

“Because if an enemy cannot reach
the soul, they cannot destroy the heart, even when they believe
they can,” she answered without emotion.

It was moments like these that Risen
wondered which of his parents truly was the stronger.

Now, as the horsemen—three of the
original fleeing band who’d evidently backtracked for the
children—circled them, the boy tensed with something his father had
told him would taste cold on the tongue.

“Fear will paralyze you. Take it in
your mouth like ice to a thirst, and push it first to your heart
and then to your head.” He touched his son on the chest and then on
the forehead. “Then, you will draw from the beast its strength and
turn fear to your advantage.”

This was the thought that entered
Risen’s mind just now, for now, and for the first time ever, he
tasted this beast called fear.

It seemed Sylvie had something more
to say, but there was no time. Risen pulled her close, placed his
back against hers, and faced the three men as they advanced upon
them, surrounding them in a lazy circle as they walked their
horses. He wondered where the rest of the fleeing band was and
glanced from one to the other, taking into his mind as many details
as fast as he could—weapons, size of the steed, armor over
strategic anatomic spots…or not. It was then that Risen recognized
the one, the man who looked back at him and met his stare at the
creek bed.

And that was not all. There was
another amongst them whose face immediately stood out, triggering
something the boy had once heard, a memory of a tale. It was
something Moira had once shared with him, when he’d pressed her on
how she came to live with them. She swore him to secrecy, told him
he must never tell his mother or father that she’d
shared.

He promised, and she described a
man. Now, his assailant met the description perfectly. He was
brutish, his hair and beard unkempt and streaked grey and black,
his eyebrows thick and menacing. A long, narrow, hooked nose flared
at the end with large nostrils, and his lips were fat and wide.
When he spoke, he looked like he could swallow a fish whole. Most
significantly, he had one eye, and chose not to cover the vacant
socket with a patch. It made for a dreadful appearance, and was
exactly as Moira once described him…horrendous.

“He was ghastly,” she admitted,
although she did not mention the man had intended to rape her, “and
your father rose up against the fiend as though he was less than a
maggot.”

Risen recognized the fiend instantly
from Moira’s tale and took the chance to speak first. “You waste
your time with us. We are only poor children and not strong. Is it
your Lord’s wish that children would be harmed, that this might
grant you shallow victory after a failure?” His words were
unnecessarily confident given his situation.

“Silence!” Yeorathe ordered, swung
from his horse, and approached the two children every bit the same
loathsome monster Moira described. “You,” he pointed at Risen.
“Step away from the girl.”

“I will not.” His hand tightened on
Sylvie’s thin wrist. He wondered if he might hurt her, but she did
not cry out.

“Then you will both die,” the man
snorted and lifted his sword as though prepared to run them both
through.

“Agreed,” Risen replied flatly and
stood as tall as his tender age would allow.

This stopped the man, and he peered
at the boy, sword drawn, his only eye narrowed as he stared down
the blade. “You will die with the girl? You are prepared to do
this?”

“I am. She lives, or we both die,
as you wish.”

“And how do you mean to affect
that…” another of the men wondered, almost bemused, “…if we simply
overpower you?”

“You can destroy her, and may take
me yet alive but, the instant I could, I would have my
way.”

“No! You can’t—” Sylvie started to
object.

“Silence!” Risen snapped sharply to
her and glanced over his shoulder. “Sister, be silent now.” His
voice was unnecessarily gruff, but his hand held onto hers, and he
squeezed gently, his eyes imploring her to follow his
lead.

This caused a round of laughter
amongst the others. The treacherous man with only one eye, snorted.
“The urchin has bite. He will bring a fair penny. The girl will
serve until she no longer can.” With that, they seemed to have made
their choice on the matter.

Risen trembled, repelled by the
expression on the face of this one, and he knew for certain this
man must be the one Moira spoke of—the fiend back at the inn before
his father had come for Nicolette. This monster was one of them,
one of the only two who’d survived the wrath of Ravan twelve years
before. The horrid man who engaged he and Sylvie was part of the
terrible fight when his father had taken Moira from the inn so long
ago. And so that had been the motivation for the raid this
morning…revenge.

Straightaway, Risen knew that he
mustn’t at any cost allow his identity to be discovered, for it
would certainly be their undoing and could place his father in a
terribly compromising position as well.

With that the children were taken
and placed on the backs of horses, separate from each other. Sylvie
was placed in front of her rider, the soldier’s meaty arms
encircling her in a human cage. She clutched the pommel of the
battle saddle, her sad, beautiful eyes stricken with
fear.